Holocene and Spend the Night present: Romare – w/ Natasha Kmeto (DJ set) – 21+
As Romare, Archie Fairhurst’s working practice is rooted in collage, building vivid new forms out of existing material. Playful and immediate, but also deeply researched and compelling, his albums and performances reaching back to 2012 unfurl as a patchwork of inspirations and obsessive lines of enquiry made up of a global panoply of source material. The clue is in the name — Fairhurst called himself Romare in tribute to Romare Bearden, the lauded American multi-disciplinary artist most renowned for his incisive collages. In Bearden’s process Fairhurst saw a way to approach the infinite pool of electronic music production, channeling his wealth of music knowledge into creating music from existing sonic material and bedding themes into his juxtapositions for a more considered approach to sampling. No music lover sticks on one sound their whole lives, and so naturally Fairhurst’s areas of focus have evolved over time from the breakout impact of his 2012 debut on Black Acre, Meditations On Afrocentrism, through a run of albums on Ninja Tune reaching up to 2020’s reflection on place and belonging, Home. Projections is a direct homage to Bearden’s work, and the Love Songs releases draw on the rich seam of romantic music as a jump-off point. Having lived a nomadic life himself growing up, his source material has moved around over time, but increasingly the sampling becomes more opaque and enmeshed within other instrumentation which rounds out the Romare sound. 2022’s Fantasy expands on that idea with a more abstract approach, folding elements from 1970s fantasy cinema into his distinctive strain of rhythmic, off-centre electronica and heralding the start of his own label, You See. For all the considered concepts and unusual arrangements, Romare’s music is dance music at heart, and it remains a natural transplant into the live and club environment. At times Fairhurst has pulled together a full line-up to render his music on stage — something of a call back to his roots playing guitar and drums in bands — but elsewhere he’s at home sequencing and arranging his music solo, re-moulding album material in the moment with the flexibility which dance music so often requires. Equally, he has DJ’d prolifically around the world with an omnivorous approach which serves as a logical extension of his studio craft, balancing hidden corners of historical investigation with the kinetic impulse of modern club music. Natasha Kmeto is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, DJ and producer from Portland, OR. Kmeto weaves dreamy dancefloor hits with influences from soul, R&B, electronic music, and pop. Her songs are emotional, honest, and open in their sharp lyricism, over fierce, dynamic rhythms and beats that keep dancefloors pulsing. Natasha Kmeto’s music deals with the timely message of living in today’s world as a queer woman. Over the years, Kmeto has embraced her identity wholly, interweaving the struggles but also the pleasures of her life into her songs. By telling her personal story, Kmeto brings listeners into her world and elevates the important voices of the LGBTQ community.
Spend the Night Presents: Nikki Nair x Hudson Mohawke: Set the Roof Tour – 21+
Advance tickets are now sold out. There will be a limited number of spots available at the door when we open at 9pm night of show.Hudson Mohawke and Nikki Nair join forces on the joint EP, Set The Roof, dropped in May of 2023 on Warp Records on a chipmunk USB stick and DSPs. Following a huge year for both artists that saw Hudmo release, Cry Sugar, his acclaimed third full-length album, and dominate TikTok for a few weeks with his accidental anthem for bad sex (Cbat). Meanwhile Atlanta stalwart Nikki Nair continued to garner notability, releasing with highly regarded labels such as Studio Barnhus, Future Classic, VISION, and a remix of Caroline Polacheck’s “Bunny Is A Rider.” This EP spawned from a number of hang outs in Hudmo’s Healthfarm studio in Echo Park, Los Angeles — an eerie and funky place to forge what became THE club weapon of the year. The track has been destroying crowds in the tracklist of Bjork, VTSS, Lala, Salute and many more. The title track “Set The Roof” uses a stem of famed writer Tayla Parx, kept from prior sessions but here, mutated into a tweaky, skippy slice of garage with the trademark clarity of Mohawke’s sonics molten with Nair’s playful genre-crossing use of hardware. By the end of 2023 “Set The Roof” was featured in many prominent media outlets as one of the “Best Tracks of 2023” including Pitchfork, Crack Mag, The Guardian, and Resident Advisor to name a few. Hudmo and Nair finished off the year performing together for a run of shows in Europe in November, including a fabled set at Boiler Room Festival in Berlin on November 17th. On their forthcoming US Tour they look to continue mesmerizing peak-time dance floors of any size with not only club bangers but also weird and completely unexpected track selections.Sign up to receive the artist presale code and grab tix early!: https://bit.ly/NikkiXHudmoTour
Durante – North American Tour 2024 – w/ OTHRWRLD, DJ Hyogo – presented by Ibiza Boys and Holocene – 21+
Kevin Durante is a multifaceted artist born in Florence, Italy, and raised in the small beach town of Fort Myers, Florida. Producing since 2006, his sound has been crafted over many years of self-taught labor. Durante primarily produces house music with a deep groove and emphasis on the soul. He has releases with Anjunadeep, Armada, W&O Street Tracks, Openers, & Nice Age and has also worked with notable artists and remixed Rufus Du Sol, Odesza, Amtrac, & Cassian to name a few. Durante’s worldly sound reaches many audiences and takes him to many places, including having played in locations such as Albania, Fiji, Ibiza & more.
Swinging, Porch Kiss (album release), Songs for Snowplow Drivers – 21+
SWINGING: Swinging is a slowcore, post-country band based in Portland, Oregon. Their songs piece together experiences Ash Vale (songwriter, vocals, guitar) has had since leaving the midwest four years ago. Their lyrics are conversational, rambling, and ecological. Swinging is Caleb Ballard (bass), Nick Meigs (pedal steel), Jakob Parsons (lead guitar), and Jasper Gill (drums). PORCH KISS: melancholic bedroom pop with lofi textures and tinges of slowcore/shoegaze. porch kiss found their way into the northwest music scene with the release of their first album ‘hindsight’ with catchy, muffled, lofi melodies sprinkled throughout. their most recent release ‘dream of sleep’ is a drowsy, liminal introduction to LP2, out via Start Track March 1, 2024. SONGS FOR SNOWPLOW DRIVERS: Songs For Snow Plow Drivers is a loud but tender rock and roll trio based in Portland. Known to make members of the audience cry, each song is a dynamic roller coaster with explosive highs and whispering lows.
Slender Gems, Neilson Family, Electric Izakaya – 21+
Slender Gems:Formed in 2018 by longtime DIY musician Jordan LeVeque (lead vocals, guitar), whose punk rock bonafides include a stint as the final resident/booker of North Portland standby Fail House, Slender Gems are a murderer’s row of some of the city’s finest musical talents: rounding out the group are Malcolm Gillooly (bass), Ben Bilotti (guitar), Jack Stringer (drums). Equally influenced by the big, opened-tuned chords of 90s slacker-rock and the elegant shredding of 70s AOR, they are at once grandiose and intimate, with LeVeque’s acerbic observations of our spiritually bankrupt world, a resounding clarion call over their guitar pyrotechnics. Neilson Family:Neilson Family is a guitar rock band from Southeast Portland. Founded in the summer of 2018, they recorded an album (Double Life), released said album, recorded another album (Be Normal), and went on tour. Then the pandemic happened. As is the case with so many in this world, it made them weird. After releasing what was perhaps their finest effort into a quarantined void, recording hundreds of demos, suffering dozens of existential crises per member, learning, forgetting and subsequently relearning innumerable songs, they grew into a new sound. It retains the chiming guitars, sweet vocal harmonies, and wry lyrics of their previous efforts, but adds new elements that reflect this frenetic, fractured age: shifting tempos, odd time signatures, and international flavors. Electric Izakaya: An experimental musical dish from Portland, Oregon that is based in hip-hop grooves, served over a bed of jazz harmony, and garnished with atmospheric flakes of ambient music. A dish best served chilled.
Self Group Collective 14th BDAY Bash! – w/ Yardsss, Glacial Fall, Ellipsism – Benefit for Outside In & Sisters of the Road – 21+
Self Group Collective is celebrating 14 years of DIY collectivism! Since 2010 the collective has been working together in an anarcho-syndicalist practice sharing resources, access to the means to produce and maintain full control and agency over the methods, direction and creative output of each member’s own labor and art. No lone straw holding the cup.This also marks the return and first Yardsss ∅∀‡ show since Rx Fest in February of 2020. As with all SGC events this is a benefit for local PDX nonprofits. Profits from B14 go to Outside In and Sisters of the Road.Additionally SGC will be collecting non-perishable food and cold weather supply donations during the event to distribute to our houseless neighbors. All are encouraged to bring any items they would like to donate and have distributed.Music byYardsss ∅∀‡ • www.selfgroup.org/yardsssGlacial Fall • www.glacialfall.bandcamp.comEllipsism • www.selfgroup.org/ellipsismVisuals by Easy • www.instagram.com/its_easy_okBenefittingSisters of the Road • www.sistersoftheroad.orgOutside In • www.outsidein.org Advance tickets at $10, $15 or $20 (give at the level you’re able to)
Roman Norfleet and Be Present Art Group, YAWA (Amenta Abioto), Jacque Hammond – 21+
Be Present Art Group:Portland’s finest practitioners of Great Black Music. A spiritual record for the ages. Roman Norfleet And Be Present Art Group play deeply felt sometimes earthy and sometimes cosmic music. A trio (sax, drums and organ) are augmented by additional percussion, soaring vocals and even a vocal appearance by a toddler. This record will take you where you need to go. Don’t miss history in the making. Across six expansive tracks, Roman Norfleet and Be Present Art Group build from free-flowing ceremony through meditative groove-based prayer and into full-on gales of improvised music. “We build our own time,” Norfleet said, a collective act of liberation through sound. Raised in the Baptist church and trained in the Hindu/Vedic philosophy of Swamini Turiyasangitanada (Alice Coltrane), Portland multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Roman Norfleet travels a lineage of Great Black Music and the world’s spiritualities on his debut for Mississippi Records. The album emerged out of drum gatherings in Washington DC’s Malcolm X Park – a pocket of freedom built on collective improvisation and shared rhythm. In Portland, Norfleet gathered a collective of artists including Jacque Hammond and members of Brown Calculus to transmit the spirit of those DC sessions.A formative encounter with Pharoah Sanders furthered the young saxophonist’s journey via the spaceways, through Sun Ra and into the universe of contemporaries like Angel Bat Dawid.YAWA (Amenta Abioto): Amenta Abioto is a singer, songwriter, producer, performance artist from Memphis, TN. In her one-woman show, she builds vocal and instrumental loops from kalimba, synthesizer, drum machine, and guitar creating atmospheric textures. Weaved into syncopated rhythms and dichotomies of comedic proportions, Amenta surprises and tantalizes audiences with mind bending ideas while skipping musically from soul-shaking gospel to smooth jazz. Boldly mystical and soul-fired, her raw live performances invoke elements of both theatrical surprise and magic through ancient African diasporic sounds and stories. Amenta studied drama and was familiarized with the stage. Her solo project made debut in at house show in Spring of 2012. Since then, Amenta has released three projects and toured with The Blow, Secret Drum Band, Typhoon, and The Ghost Ease.Jacque Hammond:Jacque Hammond is a genre-bending singer-songwriter based in Portland. She is a driven, passionate, and charismatic artist with a unique approach to R&B and more. Her music blends the organic feel of old beloved soul classics with the punch and appeal of contemporary music. After picking up a used guitar in 2011, the instrument has been a key component of her songwriting and evolution as an artist. Originally from Joliet,Illinois, she has been based in both Los Angeles and Portland. She released her first albumElbow Room in 2016, which led her song “Two” to be featured on OWN Network’s Original TV show Queen Sugar. Her song “Stuck” also made a debut on Tribeca Film’s and Hulu’s original documentary “Ballet After Dark”. Jacque has written, produced, and performed with several artists including Kelsey Lu, and opened for artists like Sonnymoon. Her latest EP Green is a funky new spin on her classic sound. It’s all about spontaneous energy, uplifting melodies, and emotional vocal performances that connect with the audience on a deeper level.
Forester – w/ Leo Islo (DJ Set) – 21+
The systems of nature are at once deeply complex and gracefully simple. Given that Forester’s music functionssimilarly, it makes sense that they named themselves after the woods.The Los Angeles-based indie electronic duo, David Parris and Xander Carlson, make lush soundscapes both inspiredby and evocative of views from a mountain, deep pink sunsets, wind through the trees and the stars on a clear night.The nourishing effect these things have on a human soul? That’s how they want their music to make you feel. Thecool thing is that it does.“There’s a section along the trail from Yosemite to Mount Whitney called Forester Pass,” Carlson says. “Hiking it wasone of the most impactful experiences of my life. The freedom I felt up there, we’re trying to put that energy in themusic.”Based in Los Angeles, the longtime friends launched the Forester project in 2019, working nine-to-five gigs andmaking music together at night. They experienced immediate success with their debut single “Spark” – a deep exhaleof a track that was picked up by YouTube tastemaker Trap Nation, signed to its label Lowly Palace and has sincecollected more than 5.7 million streams on Spotify. True to its name, the song was an auspicious beginning thatcaught the ear of an A&R at Kygo’s Palm Tree Records, where Forester signed in 2020.This was all of course happening in the dark heart of the pandemic, a moment that offered Parris and Carlson, boththen recent college grads, time to just make music. They got in the car and drove north to Carlson’s family cabin inMammoth Lakes, California, on the eastern slope of the vast Sierra Nevada mountain range.“Nobody was around, stores were closed,” Carlson recalls. “We spent months there creating music. It was a prolifictime for us.”Here, at 8,000 feet, the guys further developed the Forester sound, which falls into a dreamy, achingly emotional andthoroughly sophisticated, middle ground between the indie folk of Bon Iver – a hero to both Parris and Carlson – andmelody-focused electronic giants like Avicii. The music made in the mountains became their 2020 sophomore LP, ARange Of Light. The album’s theme is healing through nature – a phenomenon they experienced while making it, withtime off spent swimming, hiking, off-roading in the back country and taking in the night sky.The Forester catalog now encompasses three albums: A Range Of Light, 2019’s Kerosene and 2022’s Watercolor.Together, these LPs have collected an incredible 72.7 million global streams, in addition to a growing fanbase madeup of both longstanding dance fans and scene newcomers.Forester has been meeting these fans out on the road, playing their first live show in June of 2021 at Colorado’s epicRed Rocks Amphitheatre when they opened for Kygo. The Norwegian powerhouse also invited them to open for himat his massive summer 2022 stadium shows in Oslo and Mexico City, gigs that put the duo in front of tens ofthousands of fans. Outsidelands 2022 in San Francisco found Forester not only doing their hypnotic live set – forwhich Carlson sings and plays synths while Parris handles guitar — but playing a DJ gig later that night.A pillar of the project is the preservation of the nature that’s inspired them, with the guys donating a portion of the revenue from their first album to The Nature Conservancy, who used it to plant roughly 1,000 trees. Their ultimate goal is for their streaming to be at net zero carbon emissions.“The Forester project is ultimately a conservation project,” Carlson says. “We want to spread the word that our planetis both beautiful and irreplaceable.”
Abronia, Ak’chamel, Derek Monypeny – presented by Megalith and Holocene — 21+
Abronia (words from Byron Coley) A lot of bands who fly the psych banner these days have a minimalist view of the music, and choose a sort of post-shoegaze lassitude to present their “vision.” This can be astoundingly great, of course, but it also fails to address the central gobble-crazed nature of true psychedelia. Many of history’s greatest psych outfits were hewn from bizarre hybrids of disparate parts. Frankenstein monsters in search of sacred ecstasy. One gets the same vibe off of Abronia. Totally unexpected bits pop up amidst their rhapsodic jamming, conjuring shards of memory as disparate as Relf-era Renaissance, Joseph Byrd’s United States of America, and even (at least in spots) real early Siouxsie. These are just a few examples of how wide Abronia cast their net. Their instrumental brunt moves from neo-prog to folk rock to thunderheads cast in the same mold as the Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s (I shit you not!). Derek Monypeny Born in the Arizona desert, a veteran of multiple explorations into the Sahara desert via Morocco and Western Sahara, and now a resident of the Mojave, Derek Monypeny sees his musical mission as adding to and expanding on what he calls the “desert continuum;” the psychedelic sirocco swirl of desert-based stringed instruments played with utter abandon by musicians the world over. Derek is a former member of the bands Oaxacan (Oakland, CA), ALTO! (Portland, OR), and Sir Richard Bishop’s Freak Of Araby Ensemble. In addition to his solo work, he has an ongoing duo project with Bryan Hillebrandt, OAE (Oakland Afternoon Ensemble). He has performed and toured with artists such as Bill Orcutt, Jozef van Wissem, Eva Aguila/Kevin Shields, Arrington de Dionyso, and many others. Ak’chamel Ak’chamel, The Giver of Illness is an enigmatic duo from a border state. Fourth World Post-Colonial Cultural Cannibalists Circumcising The Foreskin of Enlightenment.Performing in homemade costumes and masks, they have played festivals in various cities around the U.S gaining international attention from Vice, The Wire, Tiny Mix Tapes, Consequence of Sound, and many more. They have amassed over 10 cassette albums and 1 VHS full length film.
Ethan Bortnick: Luna Park Tour
with special guest ivriThis event is All Ages OFFICIAL TICKETS:ETIX is the official ticketing source and partner of Holocene. The official website of Holocene is holocene.org. We cannot guarantee the validity of re-sold tickets purchased from secondary ticket resale marketplaces such as Ticketmaster, StubHub, SeatGeek, Vivid Seats, etc. ALL SALES ARE FINAL. PLEASE, DOUBLE-CHECK YOUR ORDER BEFORE PURCHASING. NO REFUNDS.